


Sol Invictus

by poisontaster



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-17
Updated: 2008-02-17
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2184111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't take long to make memories that will haunt you. Vague references to "Pegasus". Takes place early in the one year shadow time of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Pt. 2"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sol Invictus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/gifts).



> Written for the 2008 Helo ShAgathon. The requests were _Helo/Cain OR Helo/Lee, mind-frak OR actual sex._ I decided that just this once, maybe she can have it both ways. I don't know if this is what she wanted, but I hope like hell that she likes it. Thank you, technosage for the super beta.

_Thrum. Thrum. Thrum._

Karl can't tell if it's the throb of his heart or the ship's, but he times his breath against it, forehead and fingertips pressed to the chilled metal of the outer skin. His chest aches with the effort to breathe and breathe normally. He shouldn't have come here.

"Helo?"

It hadn't occurred to him that this was his first time back on the Pegasus until he stepped into Lee (Cain's) ready room and remembrance took him by the throat.

_"So, while the rest of your comrades are busy preparing for battle, Lieutenant, you're…here."_

_The gag prevents reply, not that Karl would reply and not that Helena Cain requires one. She leans into his face, so close that her hair swings forward to brush his cheeks. Her eyes are like stones except for the glimmer of cold, clinical interest flickering in the back of them._

_"So, tell me, Lieutenant Agathon…" She shakes her hair back over one shoulder, tilting her head. "May I call you Karl? So, tell me, Karl…" Her hand moves. "How does that feel?"_

"Helo? Karl?"

Karl straightens up from the bulkhead, trying to make it seem natural. "Hey. Lee." Karl's smile feels a little artificial but he makes it stretch up into his eyes as he tugs his uniform jacket down. "Shouldn't you be back in there?"

Lee's got a glass of Galactica's best moonshine in his hand and a light in his eyes that reminds Karl a lot of Zak. And not in a good way. Then Lee smiles and moves into the light. It changes and Karl realizes that Lee's just drunk. "Oh, probably." Lee's agreement is airy, careless. His eyes are anything but. "I doubt anyone'll miss me."

Karl scratches the back of his neck, uneasy still, feeling it low in his stomach, in his loose and unsteady thighs. He'll be fine as long as he's not called upon to walk anywhere for the next few seconds. "It's your party."

Lee raises his glass. "And there's plenty of the Chief's best to go around. I doubt anyone's going to remember tonight." His thumb tracing the cut pattern in the glass, Lee mumbles something else that sounds vaguely like, "And maybe that's a good thing." When Lee looks up and pins Karl with his gaze again, he's smiling. "You doing all right, Karl? You looked a little spooked, there."

Karl tries to remember if Lee's ever used his given name before. It's always been Helo. It is from most folks—Kara and Dee probably being the exceptions _(and Cain)_. Karl doesn't mind it. Helo's as good a name as any. It just feels weird to hear 'Karl' from Lee, who's always so formal with him. "Yeah, I'm fine," he lies. His lips are dry; he doesn't wet them.

Lee tips his head to one side, eyes glittering. "Come on." Lee jerks his head back the way they came, but Karl doesn't for a moment consider Lee's talking about going back to the party. Lee's engagement party. Where Lee—and Karl—should be, right now.

Karl follows Lee.

Karl's not an introspective guy. He doesn't dig around in his head or his heart too much and not because he's afraid of what he'll find. It's because he already knows what's in there. But he doesn't need to be introspective or even particularly smart to identify the growing knot in his stomach as Lee leads him down all-too familiar corridors to an all-too familiar room.

_"See, the thing is, Chief Tyrol, myself…we were deceived." Cain sounds a little breathless now, not that it gives Karl the least bit of satisfaction. He tries to concentrate on the knife-shiv of her bony knee into the meat of his thigh rather than…the other things she's doing. "But you, Karl…" She lets go of her 'toy' to lean close again, face close enough to his that he can feel the radiant heat of her skin, smell the faint, bitter odor of her sweat. "You knew what she was. You knew she was the enemy and you laid down with her anyway. You surrendered without a single shot fired."_

_It wasn't like that!_

_The gag prevents him from speech, but it can't stop his thoughts, however jumbled, incoherent. He tries yet again to move away from her, to move away from her toy inside him—because she won't dirty herself with him, oh no—but it's just as futile as the last time and the time before that._

_You don't understand! She's not like that!_

_He doesn't know what it was like anymore. He doesn't feel like he knows anything. This isn't torture, exactly, but he can't imagine anything more horrible. Pain is just pain. This…this is something else._

_"You betrayed everything that makes us human," Cain pronounces._

_This is madness._

"You know, you've still got guests," Karl says slowly, stopping at the threshold. He's not sure of Lee's intentions in bringing him here—Lee's not Zak, after all—but he's pretty sure he doesn't want to go into _this_ room. _How does it feel, Karl?_ "I think…this was a mistake."

"Not the first one you've ever made," Lee answers calmly, and pulls Karl into the stateroom.

< O >

"Look, Karl, I'm not going to eat you," Lee says finally. He's got a selection of liquor—real liquor—on his sideboard and he fills a glass for Karl and his own before bringing them back to the small dinette and settling across from Karl. Lee unbuttons his uniform jacket and slings his arm over the back of his chair. "If you want to go back to the party, then go on."

Lee looks strange sprawled out this way, almost posed, less natural than the rigid Fleet at-ease he adopts most of the time.

"I don't." Karl rubs his damp palms on his thighs. There's nothing to be done about the thin beading of perspiration down his spine, but long hours in flight suits means he can ignore it, shove it out of his mind. "I just… It's strange being here." _Again_.

Lee grimaces before taking a hefty swallow of his bourbon. "I try not to think about it." He looks around the suite. "I tried to get rid of most of her things. Everything I could."

It's true; the room looks hardly used, stripped of _anything_ personal other than the couple of dog-eared photos Lee's must have shoved into the frame of the mirror. But Cain hadn't been overly sentimental herself and the changes are largely cosmetic.

"No ghosts?" Karl asks, meaning it as a joke. It doesn't really come out as one, though and he tosses back his own drink to get rid of the sour taste in his mouth.

"None that keep me awake nights," Lee answers casually. "You?"

Karl's mouth twists. "Oh, plenty."

"You weren't on board that long."

Karl doesn't know how to interpret that statement; there's nothing in Lee's tone to clue him in. So he doesn't try. He just shrugs. "Long enough." He takes the bottle Lee put between them and refills their glasses. "Too long."

"It doesn't take that long to make memories that will haunt you." Lee clinks his glass against Karl's.

"So say we all," Karl agrees. He rolls the bourbon across his tongue and let it sear its way all the way down to his belly, which is finally quieting. "You're in a strange mood," he says a moment later.

"Am I?" Lee rubs the back of his neck. "I don't know."

"I'd just think you'd be…happier."

Lee makes a moue, looking into his glass, swirling the wood colored liquor around like an oracle consulting the waters. "I don't think I'm very good at being happy."

"Zak said that once."

Lee's face freezes and then relaxes, the slight pout of his mouth curving into a smile. "Did he? About him or about me?"

"About you."

"Well." Lee slams his drink, clicks the glass against the composite of the table. Repours. "Zak always had my number."

"You remind me of Zak."

"Do I?" Lee laughs, a short humorless bark. "That makes sense."

"Why?"

"Zak…liked boys." Each of the words is bitten out separately, Lee's eyes dark and shadowed with something that seems like more than simple remembrance. Karl isn't ready for it when Lee's hand comes up suddenly; he flinches and that makes it even stranger when Lee's knuckles brush gentle across his cheek, thumb coming out to follow the line of Karl's mouth. "I'm kind of surprised he didn't… _like_ you."

It's funny (except in the way it isn't funny at all); Karl hasn't been a virgin in nearly two decades and he always thought he was a long way from a prude, but being here now, like this, with Lee, Karl feels like all those uptight and virginal heroines from the vids, stalked and on the verge of ravishment.

The question is, does he want to be ravished?

"Lee…" Karl says, a stopgap measure. There's something about those Adama boys; when they want to, Zak and Lee shine like the sun gods they're named for—Helios and Apollo—but always with that edge of shadow, always with the threat of burning the unwary, bringing drought and fire-fall.

Lee smiles. It's not friendly but it is knowing. He leans back in his chair and, though the sense of threat doesn't vanish, it does ease, giving Karl the space to breathe again. Lee reaches for the bottle and slops their glasses full again. "At this very moment," Lee says, "my lovely wife to be is probably dancing with Felix Gaeta, of all people." Lee pauses, swallows, and then adds, "Whom she loves."

Karl blinks. Dee and…Gaeta?

Fortunately, it doesn't seem as if Lee requires any answer from Karl as he goes on, tracing the wet rim of his glass with his forefinger, "And whom, for reasons I don't understand and have no desire to look into, she won't let herself have." Lee laughs again, the same unfunny chuckle. "What a glorious pair we'll make." He clinks his glass against Karl and then drains it.

Karl watches Lee swallow, the light and a faint trickle of sweat following the line of his throat. Karl picks up his own glass and downs it, even though he's already thick and muzzy. What the frak, right? "Why are you marrying her?" Karl asks, once his chest and eyes stop burning enough that he can talk.

Lee tilts his head consideringly. "Why did you marry Sharon?"

"I love her." As always, the words come out solidly, firmly…of course they do; he's practiced saying them exactly that way (thinking them exactly that way) for long enough.

Lee just looks at him, still stroking his glass like it's a pet and his faint smile unmoved.

"What?"

Lee shrugs. "And I love Dee."

"Right." Karl snorts, though none of this is very funny. He's too off-balance. Too shredded.

"You don't believe me?" For a moment, Lee actually sounds outraged. Then. "Take off your jacket."

"What?"

"Your jacket," Lee repeats. "Take it off. Or are we still lying to ourselves about where this is going?"

Karl shakes his head. "I'm not…"

Lee lunges up, slamming his glass on the table hard enough that it cracks. Lee leans forward, into Karl's space, and Karl doesn't retreat. "Tomorrow," Lee says, "I will be a…happily married man. But tonight, I'm not. Tonight, I can do whatever I want. And I want you. Is that a problem, Lieutenant Agathon?"

"You sound like her," Karl whispers.

For the first time, Lee looks confused. "Who?"

"Her. Admiral Cain."

Lee's eyes narrow. "Do you want me to sound like her?"

_"No."_

Lee nods. "All right then. I won't." Lee doesn't ease back, but some of the boiling tension slacks. Not completely. Just far enough that Helo can breathe.

"I'm not Kara." Lee doesn't even blink at the fact that Karl says Kara's name instead of Dee's. Of course, why should he, Karl guesses. Everyone else knows the truth; it was naïve of him to think Lee wouldn't know that about himself.

"And I'm not Sharon. Now that we have our credentials established…?" Lee gestures toward his bed, too luxurious to be called a rack. "Is this going to happen, or should we go back and pretend we never had this discussion?"

"Lee—"

Lee sighs, impatience showing at the edges. He gets up from the table and comes to Karl's side. His hands—so much smaller than Karl's—nonetheless crush the bones of Karl's shoulders briefly before coming up to frame his face with something like tenderness. "It doesn't have to be bad, Karl. It doesn't have to be anything at all. Just…something guys do."

Heat tumbles into Karl's face, scalding. It feels like the first time he ever saw the ocean, the first time he ever swam in it, knocked ass over teakettle by the waves and afraid he'd never find his way to the air again. Before his girlfriend at the time taught him to surf, to stand on the surface and _glide_. It was then he'd known how much he wanted to fly.

"You can leave any time you want," Lee says, dogged, and Karl doesn't even know what they're talking about anymore. Talking to Lee is nothing like talking to his old man and everything like dealing with Zak, who had way too many edges beneath that sunny exterior.

"So can you," Karl points out, though his palm presses firmly against his cock, trapped and aching against his thigh. They're so close. They're so close to something that can't be taken back and, even so, changes nothing.

_"Look at you, Lieutenant. Karl. You'll take it from anyone, won't you?" Cain's laugh is brutal, scornful, like a handful of broken glass. Her fingers smear across his belly, collecting the evidence of his shame._

Lee's eyes close briefly and his breath is harsh, panting. "I know that."

"Lee—"

"Look, do you want to, or not?" The demand is the most Lee's sounded like himself than he has in the last hour.

Karl is not introspective. He knows this about himself, sure as he knows the moment to pop up from his belly to his feet and ride a wave, sure as he knows how to guide his pilot through the minefield of battle, sure as he knows he loves Sharon.

"I… Yes. Sure."

"Sure," Lee echoes, with a harsh, brittle laugh and then bends down to take Karl's mouth with his own.

< O >

"Did you do this with Zak?" Lee asks when he's seated deep and Karl can barely breathe around him.

_Did you?_

Karl digs his hands into Lee's shoulders. He's going to leave bruises, marks that will have to be explained. He doesn't care. "No," he grits out, shifting, searching, arching for that thin line of pleasure through the discomfort. He closes his eyes and breathes deep when he finds it, the header of the wave. "H-hands. His mouth, once." Karl opens his eyes again. "Your brother had a wicked mouth."

Lee snarls and snaps his hips, spearing Karl again. This time Karl just takes him, letting Lee bury himself and taking from it what he can. What he wants.

It's like riding a wave.

There are no ghosts here.


End file.
